Waiting
by dear cecil
Summary: Spy and a Serbian contact rendezvous in Bosnia and Herzegovina during a time of unrest. A deal is made.


I guess this is kind of historical fiction. It also doesn't make any fucking sense.

* * *

The rain falls hard and heavy, dragging down on Spy's coat with needy hands. He ignores it. A peal of thunder sounds, and he finds himself counting from habit—in Bosnian, though he needs no further practice.

"Jedan… dva… tri… cetiri—"

Thunder roars once again, and he blinks, raindrops falling from his eyelashes. They are immediately replaced.

Spy is in a small part of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a large name that even his well-practiced tongue sometimes stumbles over. His employer has directed him to rendezvous with a Chetnik at this spot, at this hour, on this day, and that Chetnik is late.

Spy lifts his coat sleeve, uncaring of the droplets that splash frantically on the face of his watch. Three more minutes, he decides. After that, he will have to leave. It goes against the grain to wait even just the twelve minutes that he has, especially with the recent battle at Neretva. The voice of self-preservation that's kept him alive throughout his career is telling him to leave, or to start leaving, or to do anything more than simply stand in place as a target that even a child could hit.

Flexing his fingers a few times, hands shoved deep into his pockets, Spy remains where he is. It would be far too suspicious for a man to wait at the bus stop for twelve minutes, then turn and leave just as it arrived.

One minute passes, and he shifts his weight. Another minute, and Spy sees a lone figure walking just a bit too quickly to be casual at the end of the road. The cracks of thunder are now only three seconds apart.

"Dobarvece," Spy greets the man when he reaches him.

His contact smiles humorlessly, and forgoes the proper response. "You realize the buses are no longer running?" His English is good, but his accent is heavy. It gives his sentence a dark flavor that reminds Spy of the country as a whole.

"Of course… but this is where I was told to go."

"It looks odd," his contact says. He then shrugs, turns, nods toward a squat building before he sets off, apparently confident that Spy will follow without question.

"It doesn't look very odd," Spy says casually as they trudge through the mud, fighting against heavy wind and rain. "It looks more like I am a stubborn old man, refusing to believe that the buses will stop running for something so silly as rain."

The Chetnik laughs dryly. "They are stopped for war, not for weather. Old men, however, probably deny the war as well." They reach the building and he holds open the door for Spy, heedless of the rain blowing through the doorway and onto the tile floor. Spy slouches into the dim bar and doesn't bother trying to keep things clean or dry around him, his boots dripping black mud onto the ground.

"Rain, war, revolution; all of them are equally inconvenient when all one wishes to do is move from one city to another. Each ends with you sitting in your house, waiting for it to end." Spy sits at a table far from the door, but still in the open—sitting against the far wall of any place always feels wrong.

His contact orders something dark that Spy can smell from across the table. Spy orders a fruit brandy. He doubts that either of them will drink much, anyway.

"Is that rakjia?" Spy's contact raises a brow at him.

"I like it enough."

The man shrugs a shoulder, and a flash of lightning highlights the heavy trails of smoke that permeate the bar. "Before we finish our business… do you have a name?"

Spy takes a sip of his drink. "Sejad." His name is fake, of course.

"Happiness?" The Chetnik snorts, but doesn't wait for a reply, instead giving his own name. "You may call me Ljes."

Spy makes no remark on his contact's name—he doesn't care enough to. He reaches into his coat to retrieve a neat, well-sealed stack of papers. The pile is quite short. He lays a fountain pen atop the first page. "I expect you will find everything to be in order." He watches, expression neutral, as the Chetnik scrutinizes each page; in the back of his mind, he is pleased that the group he's dealing with has sent someone with some common sense. Too often, the people he worked with skimmed the legal runarounds, went straight to the dotted line, and only learned to regret their haste afterward.

Finally, after Spy has finished a full third of his rakjia, Ljes nods, scribbling down his signature where necessary. The lines clearly do not spell Ljes. Sliding them back to Spy, he quickly downs the last of his drink.

"Thank you for the business, Sejad." He narrows his eyes for a moment, and Spy does nothing but smile.

The moment the Chetnik is out the door, Spy's face falls slack again, and he tucks the papers back into his coat. The man was willing to sign over thousands of dollars for weaponry and aid, yet not willing to pick up the tab? "Bastard." After tossing down a precise amount of change onto the table, Spy leaves the bar, walking back out into the storm. The rain is falling harder now than before.

Over the roar of thunder, he just barely hears the crack of a gunshot from somewhere behind the bar, and smiles grimly. He walks back to the hotel he is staying in, hangs his coat up, and kicks off his boots, sinking onto the bed; his wet hair sticks to his forehead and water seeps into the pillow. His colleagues will be glad to hear that he's gotten the name of one of the terrorists, but he won't be able to tell them for another week, while the buses are held up.

Flat on his back, eyes half opened, Spy waits it out.


End file.
